My suggestions - Priority, Job memory, and other ideas

[Luvtail]

Hi guys, long time Don't Starve fan, 236 hours total. Been waiting so eagerly for this game and loving it so far, I have a few suggestions.

#1: Priority

The priority system is a great idea and in practice it works excellently, but I think given how frequently I use it it could be tweaked so that I don't have to manually click the priority level. I expected to be able to press 'P' and then press the priority number I want using my number keys, '6' '9' etc. This only brings up the build menus however. And it's a shame because I'm so often using Priority 9, and P and 9 are right next to each other on the keyboard, would make things so much faster. Alternatively, what about using the scroll wheel to cycle through the priorities while in Priority mode? Like all players I use the Priority system every other minute so making the selection more efficient would be a huge boon.

#2 Memory function for Job allocations

Being able to select Dupes jobs is vital to maximising efficiency, but with the stress mechanic I often need to disable a Dupe's jobs so that he'll have free time to use the massage table to destress him back to normal. The trouble is that once this is done I need to manually reinstate his jobs. Could there possible be a "save jobs" button in the UI for each individual Dupe that saves their current job allocations? Say you had a Dupe whose only jobs were generating power, digging and delivering, you'd click a little 'save' button, and it would store those jobs. Then you could temporarily remove all his jobs so he can get a massage, then when he's ready to work again you click a little "load" button and it restores the jobs he had saved. This would save a lot of time once you start getting more than 10 dupes and you begin to lose track of who they are, what they do, and what you want them to be doing.

#3 Creature farming/domestication

It's been said in the streams that there are possible plans for this, but I want to reinforce that I'd love to be able to utilise creatures for my base. I can't really illustrate my point though because the only creature I've encountered is a Puft (which I love, their animations are hilarious). What would be great is if you could build a moving conveyor belt that led directly into a storage container, that way when you find a contaminated biome with several puffs inside, you could make a conveyor belt floor and it would collect all their falling slimes and take them directly to a container for later conversion to algae.

Perhaps there could be a way to domesticate certain animals so that they hang around inside your base, reducing stress within their proximity because they're the Dupes' mascot so to speak.

I don't know what weird and wonderful creatures you have in store for future patches but it'd be cool if we could put a few of them into little pens/fishtanks and have them convert one resource to another for us. You could make these payoffs a risky choice too, like making a creature that converts vomit into coal, haha. So you'd have to deliberately stress out a Dupe in order to gain a resource, and decide if that's worthwhile. Or there could be a creature that accepts food and poops out a resource in return, and the more you feed it the bigger it gets and gives more of that resource, while taking time to return to normal size, but if you feed it too much at once it gets too big and explodes and destroys nearby equipment and damages your Dupes. Sort of like how if you overfeed monster meat to pigs they become werepigs!

#4 Sustainability

This has been mentioned in streams but I'd looove to be able to make a sustainable base. Currently I'm severely limited by available water and algae, using slimes and contaminated water is only a temporary relief and I'm certain that someday soon my dupes will all suffocate in my current game. A way to farm and create renewable algae is my number one desire at the moment, along with a possible method to create alternative fuel sources for when the coal runs out. Perhaps a biogas system? Where contaminated soil, spoilt food, and other organic matter is heated inside a vessel to anaerobically digest and produce methane, which can power a gas turbine to generate power and as a by-product, plenty of heat. But there could be a high-tier research item to build a tri-generation plant connected to the turbine, which consumes the waste heat of the turbine to refrigerate food storage containers. These are real life systems, just research biogas and Combined Heat Power (CHP) plants to get an idea.

 

Thanks so much for this great game guys, can't wait to see how it turns out!